What public health issue concerns you the most right now?

Dean Chien, pre-med, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Climate change isn’t typically seen as a public health issue, but its health effects are as real as any viral infection or chronic disease. Wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events are the most visceral examples of climate-related impacts on human health and mortality. But more insidious challenges also exist. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes can travel farther north in a warming world. Rates of irritability, insomnia, and depression rise during unrelenting heat waves. Even the air we breathe is affected by the climate. Increased temperatures cause a rise in ground-level ozone, which inflames lungs and causes asthma and COPD.

COVID-19 has proven that world governments and organizations can mobilize relatively quickly if faced with existential threats, and that we can all adjust our ways of living to help protect the most vulnerable. Ultimately, the health of our planet is intimately intertwined with our own. The medical community ought to think of climate change on the same terms as a pandemic.

Dr. Margaret Chisolm, Johns Hopkins Medicine

The ever-increasing number of deaths from opioid overdoses.

Dr. Mike Fingerhood, Johns Hopkins Medicine

We need effective harm reduction, including safe consumption sites, to mitigate the opioid overdose epidemic.

Jocelyn Lee, MPH student, Toronto, Ontario

Homelessness and the lack of supportive housing as a social determinant of health.

Dr. Jeff Millstein, Penn Medicine

Lack of social support for older people with chronic debilitating illnesses.

Dr. Mariah Robertson, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Social isolation and loneliness among older adults, particularly the homebound. #thisisgeriatrics

Dr. Colleen Christmas, Johns Hopkins Medicine

A few: distrust in medicine, inadequate housing, lack of caring for others/hostility, and the damned pandemic.

Dr. Rachel Salas, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Sleep issues. With all that’s going on in the world, there’s more people suffering from sleep disturbances, drowsy driving, memory issues, mood issues affecting relationships, loneliness, and circadian rhythm issues.

Crystal Favorito, pre-med, Johns Hopkins Medicine

I’m concerned about the current resurgence of COVID cases in Europe.